Educational Philosophy Symposium

International Phenomenological Society
A Snposiun on EducalionaI FIiIosopI BepI

AulIov|s) BapIaeI Benos
Souvce FIiIosopI and FIenonenoIogicaI BeseavcI, VoI. 7, No. 2 |Bec., 1946), pp. 264-292
FuIIisIed I International Phenomenological Society
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REPLY
A
Both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Hook criticize the Harvard Report as being
an electic melange, when it should. be a genuine intellectual synthesis.
What, they ask in so many words, is the underlying philosophical Weltan-
schaung of the Report in terms of which the varying components of its
doctrine are selected, and the importance of each is assessed and measured?
I agree with them that such a unifying view is missing in the Report; I
also agree with them that such a cosmology is necessary. But whether the
Harvard Committee should be criticized for the omission is another matter.
Practical considerations had to supersede theoretical proprieties. The
reader should be reminded that the Report was addressed to the phil-
osophical layman, and that to have elaborated a philosophical synthesis
would have involved using a technical vocabulary in a way to defeat the
purpose of the Report: namely, to persuade the general teacher, the
educational administrator, and beyond that, the wider circle of the intelli-
gent layman. Also it would have meant vastly increasing the size of the
Report. The question still remains, however, whether the doctrine of the
Report is intrinsically eclectic, or whether, given the opportunity, the
synthesis could be produced as a background for the educational doctrine.
I, myself, think that it could be; I think that the necessary synthesis can
be found in Mr. Whitehead's philosophy, especially in those parts of it in
which he contrasts the emergent with the timeless phases of reality, or the
genetic-functional with the logical and essential laws of the universe.
But that is a long story which I shall not attempt to recount here.
The reader doubtless recalls Aristotle's definition of the morally right
action as the one which is a mean between excess and deficiency. For
example, courage is a mean between the extremes of rashness and timidity.
The definition has been attacked as superficial; it does not define what is
an extreme. Indeed it would seem that the extreme cannot be defined ex-
cept with reference to the mean, and that Aristotle's definition of right
action is circular. It is also true, however, that Aristotle's proposal is
highly in accord with common sense; I would even venture to say that it
has proved to be the most useful of all recognized guides to action. Aris-
totle explains that the ethical mean is not arithmetical; the mean is nearer
to one extreme than to the other,-nearer sometimes to excess and some-
times to deficiency. Also he implies (rather than explicitly asserts)
that the ethical mean cannot be arrived at by any general formula; it has
264
REPLY 265
to be seized by a kind of tact. Since the right action is a mean, it partakes
to some extent of each extreme. So the extremists are bound to urge that
the definition of the right action is self-contradictory. Also, since the
mean is located at a certain distance from each extreme, naturally it is an
extreme from the point of view of both excess and deficiency. Thus, to
the timid, the courageous appears to be rash, and to the rash the courageous
appears to be timid.
Now, the Harvard Report on General Education is Aristotelian in spirit,
although in an unplanned fashion. The Report starts with two regnant
theories: the Hutchins brand of Thomism on the one hand, and the
Dewey brand of naturalism on the other. The one emphasizes faith and
reason, the other experience; the one stresses fixity of truth, the other
mobility. The Report attempts to locate educational truth as a mean
between these two schools; naturally, then, it has appeared extreme to
both. The mediaevalists condemn the Report as too rash, and the natural-
ists as too timid. Just as in the case of Aristotle's mean, the Report is
criticized as joining mutually incompatible notions. The Report is also
accused of vagueness and lack of rigor; the locus of the mean in respect
of educational truth is not defined with mathematical (shall we say, logical)
precision. Certainly, a philosopher who aims at balance (which I make
bold to identify with reasonableness) should expect no bouquets from the
opposing camps.
Most certainly I do not find any bouquets offered to the Report, either
by Mr. Taylor or Mr. Hook. In Mr. Hook's statement I have counted
fifteen (15) occasions in which points in my article are described as 'in-
consistent', 'contradictory', 'ambiguous', or 'mysterious'. (I am not
including the contradictions which Mr. Hook thinks he finds inmy figures
of speech.) I knew we were bad, but I did not realize we were that bad.
It is possible, however, that Mr. Hook makes a virtue of disputation. He
refers to his own book on education. My own impression, when I read the
book, was that I agreed with it on many essential points. In this matter
of contentiousness, Mr. Dewey, I believe, must share the responsibility
with his disciples. Mr. Dewey has a way of setting up his own position
always in opposition to those of his predecessors; his truth must destroy
the views of his opponents. He sees philosophical discussion as a per-
petual battle in which the giants kill the dwarfs. Mr. Dewey also praises
the scientific method, despite the fact that the scientific mode of thought
generally operates by way of including and expanding earlier theories. I
speak as an outsider in science, reporting only what my scientific colleagues
have told me. But I am told (to take one example) that Einstein does not
abolish Newton. Newton's laws of motion remain valid today within the
range of the phenomena which he was concerned to explain. Einstein's
266 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
theory is accepted as true in the sense that it takes in the contributions of
Newton and places them in a wider context. Science preserves its past by
devouring it. The tendency to emphasize actual disagreements more than
agreements among philosophical schools is bound to encourage the cynical
impression among the public that philosophers, like nations, are perpet-
ually engaged in war, and, what, is infinitely worse, that there is no philo-
sophic truth to be obtained.
In this connection, consider Mr. Hook's procedure on two points. (a)
At a certain step in his argument, he comes upon a passage in my article
with which he agrees. lie says: "Reason is characterized (i.e., in my
article) in the same way as naturalists characterize intelligence." "Reason
is not separated ... from the whole man." The reader supposes perhaps
that Mr. Hook would be pleased to find evidence of agreement. Not at
all; Mr. Hook feels terrifically let down, but he recovers superbly and at
once delivers this ironic thrust: "This is the language of Dewey em-
broidered with a few phrases from Santayana." (As a matter of fact, it
comes from Plato.) Earlier, we have been rebuked for not consenting to
the "operational logic of belief"; now we are rebuked for accepting it.
(b) The other point appears in Mr. Hook's consideration of knowledge.
The Report speaks of reason and intelligence (the two terms are used
interchangeably) as a generic type of thought subdivided into three modes:
science as the study of abstract systems, social science as the study of
complexity, and literature as the insight into concreteness through the
imagination. The Report holds that all three alike are forms of reason,
in that they reveal traits of the objective world; and that all three are
nevertheless different applications of reason, the difference arising from the
fact that they refer to different aspects of reality. The Report further
stresses the point that the three modes to some extent share their dif-
ferent features; for examples, philosophy has an exact scientific side (logic)'
and science uses the imagination. Now, Mr. Hook likewise maintains
that these various modes of thought on the one hand share the same
'pattern', and on the other differ in their 'techniques' and 'procedures',
according as their subject-matter differs. He also points out that science
uses the imagination. In short, both for him and for us, there is an
identity and there are differences; there is also an overlapping in the
differences. Despite all this, Mr. Hook is severely and extendedly critical
of the statements on this matter in the Report. All I can find is a dif-
ference in terminology. Mr. Hook violently objects to the fact that we
limit the term 'science' to only the first of these modes; he would extend the
word to cover all three (at least, the first two; I am not sure about the third).
In short, what we call reason, he would call science, having already defined
scientific method as self-critical inquiry, which is what we mean by reason.
REPLY 267
But there is not even a verbal difference. Science is scientia, which is a
counterpart of the Greek episteme, which inspired us to speak of reason.
We have been talking Greek and Mr. Hook has been talking Latin.
Given the present connotations of the word 'science' in the public mind,
I would deplore Mr. Hook's employment of the term in the way he and his
fellow-naturalists employ it. An innocent reader, perusing Mr. Hook's
work on naturalism, will come across the statement that the views in the
book are based on the 'scientific method.' Mr. Hook will mean by the
phrase simply that they are products of a reflection over experience; but
the reader will interpret it to mean that Mr. Hook's naturalistic views have
the certainty of physics, which they have not. Imagine now our in-
nocent reader studying St. Thomas' Summa. In fact, St. Thomas bases
his proofs of God on experience; yet St. Thomas claims for his proofs the
validity of rational insight. The reader will then think that St. Thomas'
proofs must be inferior in rigor and certainty to Mr. Hook's exposition of
naturalism for the particular reason that St. Thomas does not speak of
them as scientific; and the reader will be mistaken.
As an example of the kinship between classical and modern methods
of investigation, take Socrates' use of what he calls discursive reason.
In the Meno, he sets out to discover what virtue is. His method is in-
ductive (the word, by the way, was invented by Socrates in the Greek
form: epagoge). He proceeds by examining examples of particular
virtues, such as temperance and justice. Then he proposes a hypothesis
(his own word); the hypothesis is that virtue is knowledge. Then he draws
the implications of the hypothesis: for instance, if virtue is knowledge,
then virtue can be taught. Then he checks the implication with the 'facts'
(pragma, the word from which pragmatism is derived). He notes in fact
that virtue cannot be taught. Thus, Pericles was a good man, but he was
unable to teach virtue to his sons (Socrates is silent about the daughters).
And now for the conclusion: there must be something wrong with the
hypothesis that virtue is knowledge; probably virtue is right opinion.
I do not, of course, mean to deny that there are differences between me
and Mr. Hook (or between the Report and Mr. Dewey and other prag-
matists). Not only is it true that differences exist, but they are im-
portant. But before we take these up,
it is useful to narrow them down.
The most important difference concerns, I take it, the role of tradition as a
valid source of belief, and the limitations (if any) of experience as a source
of valid belief. On this point, Mr. Hook asks me admirably trenchant
questions which I will try to answer to the best of my ability. He is rather
contemptuous of tradition, describing it as 'inherited confusion', and as
'primitive folk-ways'. I would say that tradition is unconscious re-
flection, although I admit that my phrase may sound paradoxical, perhaps
justly so. By using the term unconscious, I mean that tradition does not
operate by reference to an explicitly formulated canon. Yet I call it
reflection because tradition entails the testing and winnowing of an idea by
the ways of crude experience and immediate judgment. Tradition em-
bodies the trial and error groping of every-day living, extended into the
dimension of time. A traditional idea, although not the product of con-
scious inquiry, must not be confused with superstition, nor is it arbitrary.
Consider a particular moral code as an example of a traditional con-
ception. Now, a moral code is not the edict of a dictator, nor the result of
some plot concocted in secrecy. It is a growth, slow and laborious; it is not
arbitrary, because it has been subjected, as we say, to the test of time.
Of course, time is not an entity which acts. By the phrase 'the test of
time', is meant the test of circumstances as they unfold in time; the test of
extensive experience, and extensive not only in time, but in that it is also
the pooled experience of many individuals at the same time. While tradi-
tional views do not develop in the manner of consciously posed hypotheses
which are checked in the laboratory, they nevertheless are passed through
the filter of action and life. (I have advisedly used a moral code as an
example of a tradition; tradition is more at home with values than with
scientific theories, which operate in the mode of conscious reason.) Thus
tradition carries evidential force. But are not traditions sometimes
wrong? Yes, and so are scientifically checked hypotheses sometimes
wrong. In the first place, then, tradition as a source of valid belief, rep-
resents the contribution of unreflective experience and life to conscious
belief.
Of course, the above account is a simplification. We speak of the
Greek viewpoint as a tradition; yet the Greek viewpoint is to some extent
the product of the conscious reflection of such individuals as Socrates.
Even so, there is truth in speaking of tradition as, at least partly, an
unconscious growth; I will have more to say on this point when I discuss
premises. How does tradition accomodate itself to innovation? How does
the older mother-in-law accomodate herself to the young wife? In both
cases, the answer is: by the use of commonsense and tact. Mr. Hook asks:
how is it possible for new ideals and new principles to arise in human ex-
perience? And in what sense do reflection and experience later implement
and modify their meaning? In answer, let me attempt a truncated account
of the idea of the worth of the human individual, so basic to our American
culture.
This concept first came to the fore in Plato's doctrine of the immortality
of the individual soul. Yet its significant implications remained buried
underground, so to speak. Plato hardly speaks of freedom and he was
against democracy; Plato the man fell short of Plato the thinker. Never-
REPLY 269
theless, the seed began to stir. In Aristotle, we have a highly explicit
doctrine of man as an end and as free. Here is progress, but much dark-
ness too, for Aristotle explicitly defends slavery. It is essential to note
that Aristotle's defense of slavery does not develop from his philosophy of
human nature; in fact, it is inconsistent with it. Again we have the case
of a philosopher whose thoughts outrun his sentiments. With the advent
of Christianity (I omit the Stoics) the idea began to receive concrete con-
tent; it was seen to mean that the slaves-and the masses as well- have
intrinsic worth as human beings. Yet Christianity failed to improve the
economic and political status of the masses to any significant degree. The
improvement came with the rise of science and the rise of political democ-
racy. Even so, it cannot be said that the various revolutions of the eight-
eenth century put an end to the troubles of the working class. Today we
are witnessing the emergence of economic democracy which makes its own
useful revisions of the formula. The moral of this brief homily is that
man begets an insight, but in a bare and naked way; and that gradually
the insight gets definiteness of meaning when At implications are recog-
nized. The history of the moral ideal of the dignity of man is the story of
an evolution, in which, on the one hand, there are constant and fixed
elements, and on the other, varying, fluid elements-the latter supplying
the filling in of the formula.1
Granting all the above, the question-the most important of all-still
remains unanswered. I come now to the sticking-point of the whole
argument. In what justifiable fashion could tradition be described as
providing basic insights, independently both of reflection and of exper-
iment? For instance, the Report speaks of 'the received idea of the
Good', a reference which Mr. Hook compares to Plato's doctrine of rem-
iniscence. (I may interpolate that the Report itself makes that com-
parison.) Are traditions absolute? But, as" Mr. Hook points out,
traditions oppose each other; how then does one choose among them save by
the method of reflective inquiry? And if one does-what becomes of their
absoluteness? To take two only-the Western and the Hindu traditions
have to enter the arena and fight it out among themselves.
According to Aristotle, premises are obtained by induction from ex-
perience. Experience suggests principles but cannot demonstrate them.
The premises are known by an immediate insight of reason. Induction is
absolutely different from deduction; it is whatimakes deduction possible
by furnishing premises for reasoning. Aristotle's view of induction is
wholly adequate within its own limits. It makes' a place both for the
1 I have taken the liberty of quoting this paragraph from an article of mine pub-
lished in the Journal of Higher Education, February 1946.
relevance of experience and for the decisiveness of reason. Naturalism, on
the other hand, regards premises as hypotheses to be perpetually checked
by experience. The difference between the two doctrines, while important,
is irrelevant to the question which confronts us. In both cases, the prob-
lem of getting premises is relatively simple, provided you have already granted
your premises as to the nature of knowledge. Underlying Aristotle's doc-
trine, there is the premise that rational insight is valid; underlying natural-
ism, there is the premise that sense-experience is valid. The first may be
challenged by the intuitionist; the second by any one who (like Plato
sometimes) thinks of sense-experience as an illusion. There are plenty
of metaphysical systems whose premises about the real world are in-
disputable once the truth of their premises about the valid method of
discovery has been granted.
With Descartes (on- one interpretation), it is the other way around.
Descartes maintained that our trust in reason has to be guaranteed some-
how; and he found the guarantee in the existence of a God who will not
deceive us. Yet the existence of God had to be demonstrated by reason,
and Descartes' procedure is clearly circular. I find the problem of the
derivation of premises one of the hardest in philosophy, nor do I claim to
have solved it. The real question is how premises as to knowledge are
obtained. Like Mr. Hook, I am trying to go as far back as possible,
beyond prevailing traditions (including the scientific tradition) to their
sources. Our own tradition, our own supreme premise is' that truth is
arrived at by a reflection over experience; but other traditions hold other-
wise. It would seem that premises as to knowledge are obtained neither
by rational insight nor by experience, since they are premises concerning the
validity of each. The Harvard Report speaks of faith as the source of
premises; but I was careful to leave that word out of my article, knowing
that I would have trouble enough without waving that red rag in the face
of my colleagues.
There is the more serious consideration that faiths oppose faiths, and if
we are to tell the true prophets from the false, we need something beyond
prophecy. Is there some super-tradition, I wonder, to be used as a stand-
ard for all traditions; or is there just plain reason, a universal, native
power of the mind, not authoritarian to be sure, but with the function
rather of taking all the traditions and all the faiths as data, weighing each
against all, and aiming to reconcile them together in an intlutive scheme?
Mr. Hook believes that he escapes the difficulty by separating doctrine
from method. There should be no authority of doctrine; there should be
authority of method-he says, if I read him aright. I disagree, and for
several reasons. I don't see why method should be taken dogmatically any
more than doctrine should. Other traditions as to method and knowledge
REPLY 271
exist, challenging our own. It is no good trying to refute the mystic by
telling him that his views are not arrived at by the use of the scientific
method; he does not accept the premises of science as to what constitutes
knowledge. Second, it is not true that doctrine is independent of method.
Grant the monopolistic validity of sense as experience and you have already
ruled out necessity in nature (see Hume); grant the criterion of intersub-
jectivity and you have ruled out consciousness (see behaviorism). For
instance, in the volume of essays on naturalism (edited by Y. Krikorian),
one of the contributors proposes a set of categories to be employed in in-
terpreting the universe; and among these is the category of event. Now, if
everything has to be an event, the idea of a timeless God is excluded from
the outset and without argument. The writer asserts that his list of
categories makes no demand upon the metaphysical commitments of the
reader, as though giving up one's belief in God were nothing. As well
imagine a gangster stopping a man on the highway and saying: "Don't
worry. All I want from you is your life."
To return to Mr. Hook (who is not the defendant in the preceding par-
agraph), method does not seem to be independent of doctrine either.
Thus, the rule that principles claiming to be a priori should be subjected to
the test of reflective experience, has something to do with the doctrine of
the rational nature of man and of his worth. I don't know whether the
inductive premise comes under the heading of method or of doctrine; let us
call it a doctrine governing method. Without the inductive premise, no
prediction may be justified; yet the premise cannot be demonstrated from
experience, since the future, qua future, is not an object of experience.
Science cannot prove the inductive premise by scientific methods; yet
science cannot get on without it. As older aristocracies are said to take in
recruits from the ruder classes in order to toughen their stock, so science
must mitigate its logical austerities, mixing the blue blood of scientific
method with the common blood of faith.
How are Mr. Hook and the rest of us to answer the authoritarian who
prefers to lay down dictates as to what we are to believe? We are all
liberals, believing that dogmatism is wrong, and that all beliefs should be
subjected to inquiry. We agree with Socrates that the unreflective life
is not worth living for a man. If we now proceed to inquire into the
premise of liberalism (as indeed we should do), we are granting the very
premise into which we are inquiring. The trouble with genuinely ultimate
premises is that to question is really to assume them. Their proof is
circular. If I take my faith in democracy and question it (as Mr. Hook
says I should-and I agree) then I find myself proving democracy by the
argument that it is the best system because it satisfies the best interests of
everybody. But that is to assume democracy; Hitler would not admit for
a moment that the interests of everybody have a claim to his consideration.
Then, again, I find myself urging (in proceeding to demonstrate the truth
of the democratic premise) that, after all, I should accept nothing on faith,
that every individual should be shown for himself; and then I am granting
individualism which is part of the democratic premise, which is what was
to be shown.
Summing up, in this matter of first premises, I venture to say that Mr.
Hook has not probed far enough, and I can report no solution of my own.
Mr. Hook quotes with approval the statement in the Report that it is
possible to project "an ideal of cooperation on the level of action irrespective
of agreement on ultimates." At the same time, he quotes me as main-
taining that we need a metaphysical synthesis "as an underpinning for the
common values on which our society depends." The two statements ob-
viously are in conflict, and Mr. Hook is right in calling attention to the
matter. It is a common experience that the transition from theory to
practice is rarely smooth and in this case I have compromised; I could
not do otherwise. When I saw the first of the two phrases go into the Re-
port, I felt as though we were placing a knife at the throat of philosophy.
By allowing it to be inferred that philosophy makes no difference to life,
we were throwing up the sponge for philosophy. Whether we accept
Plato's metaphysics (supernaturalism) or Mr. Hook's (naturalism), makes
a tremendous difference in what we are entitled to believe in the field of
values. With Mr. Chesterton, I hold that the first question the landlady
should ask her prospective tenant is about the nature of his philosophy,
not about the contents of his pocket-book. But if so, why did I consent to
the statement that ultimates don't matter? The answer involves a ref-
erence both to tactics and to facts. We would have had to start a prolonged
argument in the committee among its twelve members, and this was not
a practical proposition; maybe we would have reached agreement on ulti-
mates eventually, but the time certainly did not exist. But more impor-
tant was the fact that the theologians and the naturalists (on the com-
mittee and in the world at large) do agree on values. But surely this proves
that doctrinal differences make no difference to the latter? Not necessarily.
The fact of our agreement on values despite doctrinal diversity as to the
cosmos throws a light on human nature, not on doctrine.. It only illustrates
the truth that human beings are capable of stowing away their mental
goods into different trunks; or, to change the figure, that the philosopher's
academic right hand does not know what his work-a-day left hand is doing.
The workings of the inner self are hard to unravel and exceedingly complex;
I mean as to the interrelation of beliefs, sentiments, and actions. The
naturalists, I maintain, are inconsistent in holding simultaneously to the
naturalistic and the democratic premises. But then, human beings are
REPLY 273
not always consistent; and when they are not, they sometimes seem to be
the richer for it.
As for the larger point (the relation of philosophy to life), clearly today
under the influence of the scientific trend, philosophy is tending to develop
into a pure science, a contemplation of the truth for its own sake. But
I still cling to the teaching of Socrates that the knowledge supremely worth
having is the knowledge of human happiness; and to the teaching of Plato
that philosophy should at least end with the wisdom of living. The change
in our conception of philosophy is strikingly analogous to the trans-
formation in our study of the celestial phenomena. First, we had astrology,
when human beings viewed the stars as directly affecting human fortunes.
Now astrology has given way to astronomy, a strict science which regards
the stars as indifferent to human destiny. Man may look at the stars;
but the stars may not look at man. I still have a hankering after
astrology; I wonder whether the stars are as remote from man as the astron-
omers say they are; and I like to think that there is an affinity between the
greatest and the least in creation. All this is foolishness, you will say.
Very well; but at least, 1 am sure of the following: philosophy will be un-
true to itself unless at some point it makes a connection with the stream of
common life; unless philosophers pursue their task in the spirit of the old
astrologers, as men viewing the fixed stars in heaven in their bearing on the
transient courses of human life on this earth. Philosophy is cosmic as-
trology, linking the great realities with the small.
B
I. Mr. Taylor quotes a certain paragraph with approval, and I will
re-quote it with disapproval. "Each era, nation, class, self, with its
surrounding mental atmosphere or spiritual aura, forms a relative cosmos.
This cosmos can be said to have 'being', a functional order. But such being
is far from permanent or without latent contradictions. Each such phase
or cultural gestalt is the product of a preceding phase, which did not last
or which could not continue its being because it contained too much con-
tradiction. A period is not a vertical combination of realms, a layer-cake
with a frosting of essence. A period is a multi-dimensional process. The
vertical dimension surely exists, historically and socially; but it is not a rigid
pyramid, but rather a tilting wave, the single atoms of which keep rotating
while the general motion is forward, with undercurrents. Between
bases and superstructure there are tensions and disproportions, and
there is no mechanically prompt relationship like that of cause and effect."
Mr. Taylor (who did not write this paragraph, but likes it) is an em-
piricist; yet could anything be remoter from experience than this rhapsody
with its 'tensions', 'rotations', 'pyramids', 'auras', and 'frostings of essence'?
I suggest that the 'tilting waves' made the writer giddy; they certainly
make my head reel. Then there is 'multi-dimensionality'-a five dollar
word which baffles me. Generally, the longer the word, the shorter the
meaning; and conversely, as the sun rises higher, the shadows get shorter.
Does the term mean plurality of worlds and substances; for instance, the
distinction between natural and supernatural, soul and body? Then I
have been a 'multidimensionalist' without knowing it. Yet Mr. Taylor
accuses us of thinking along a straight line-a criticism which I take as a
compliment. He attacks with vehemence the old-fashioned disciplinary
courses (which, by the way, we never defended in the Report) and yet they
had the merit of promoting hard and straight thinking, and of never letting
moods stand for meanings.
II. In several instances, Mr. Taylor is preaching sermons to those who
are already converted. He insists that what we need in education is, not
just contemplation of traditional views, but an examination of them. We
agree. He urges that genuine education is self-education. We agree. He
complains of a Yale professor who taught Plato without relating his doc-
trine to the students' needs. We heartily agree. But we must give even a
Yale man his due. No matter how hard the teacher tries to make the
doctrine significant, there probably will remain some points which will be
'abstract', and not obviously connected with the students' experience.
The student, then, must take the teacher's word that they are important.
The students' experience is not rich enough to provide footholds for all the
ramifications of the general doctrine. It is also true that the student can
take a spontaneous and direct interest in such abstract problems as the
existence of God, freewill, the possibility of knowledge and the like. If the
teacher attempts to bring his exposition down to concrete examples, some
students will feel that he is patronizing them. Finally, Mr. Taylor urges
that we should not offer a curriculum with formally separated areas.
We agree. That is what we have been trying to do-to break down the
barriers of departmentalism. Perhaps there is a difference of degree
however; I suppose Mr. Taylor would break down even the distinction be-
tween the larger areas of the humanities, the sciences, and the social studies.
Here we come up against his doctrine of interrelatedness, which we, too,
advocate in the Report. Nevertheless, there is a point of divergence to
which I will come later.
III. Mr. Taylor accuses us of remaining in the genteel tradition; he calls
us 'neo-classical humanists'. Having aimed to follow a middle-of-the-road
policy, we are attacked as road-hogs by those who are driving on the sides.
Mr. Taylor complains that we are plotting to enter the armed camp of the
enemy 'disguised as civilians', and I suppose, according to the laws of war,
we deserve to be shot. In fact, we were trying not to make war; and that
REPLY 275
is an unpardonable sin in the eyes of our opponents. Mr. Taylor correctly
observes that we and he differ in our theory of history. We view the
history of thought more as a cumulative process in which the later and
novel elements are fitted in to the older; he thinks that the former supersede
the latter. We are evolutionists and he is a revolutionist. We are rec-
oncilers, while he is combative and arranges doctrines in terms of either-or.
Curiously enough, we are only practising what he preaches (but does not
practise). I am referring to his view of the connectedness of things and
ideas. For we hold that such a connectedness exists not only within the
components of a limited and local time, but also among events and beliefs
through time, at different periods.
This point merits more than a passing comment. Our friends of the
sociological school insist that an idea of a given time is interwoven with all
the social factors of that time: it reflects the special institutions, the
habits, the needs, the geographic background of the society. Quite so.
But most inconsistently, in Mr. Taylor's system this complete monism
within a given cross-section of time, is replaced by a complete atomism in
the dimension of successive segments of time. Traditionalism, such as we
speak of, is simply the assertion of the organic relation of present with
past. Mr. Taylor's contextualism is strangely limited and strangely un-
balanced. It is as though particular periods of time formed separate
nations of a tribal, jingoistic sort; within each, there is the completest
subordination; without each, the completest anarchy.
IV. Mr. Taylor writes from the point of view of a certain philosophical
thesis, to which I hope I am not doing injustice, if I sum it up as
a philosophy of process, of organism, and of naturalism. His position
strikes me as very much like Mr. Whitehead's, with the important quali-
fication that he leaves out Mr. Whitehead's God and the eternal objects.
Along with his metaphysics and as issuing out of it, Mr. Taylor has a theory
of knowledge, namely of belief as a natural product and as conditioned by
the social and economic climate; he has also a theory of human nature in
which all distinction of faculties or powers is denied. Now pari passu
with his philosophy, he expounds his theory of education, and indeed
interweaves the two in a notable and commendable fashion. His edu-
cational conclusions issue from his more general philosophical premises;
and the latter lead to practical consequences. His essay is of interest and
of value both to the philosopher and to the practising teacher; it should
have the important effect of bringing them closer, something that very
much needs doing.
At the same time, the very merit of his paper makes a debate with him
difficult. A structure as tightly built as his does not lend itself to piece-
meal attack; in order to make a dent, one has to shake the whole structure.
Of course, I cannot undertake in this short compass to refute the basic
tenets of Mr. Taylor's system (nor would I wish to); and of course I have
exaggerated the difficulty of a critical discussion of his doctrine. I will
therefore try to select stones of the building here and there and work on
them with my drill, with a view not of razing the edifice, but possibly of
'restoring' it.
V. Mr. Taylor describes his view as relativism, which arises from an
application of his contextualism to the sphere of belief. To my mind,
relativism is not a question that can be dealt with in the simple terms of
yes and no; there are relativities and relativities. For instance, had I
been writing a report about education in modern Greece, my whole aim
would be to de-emphasize tradition and to stress natural science and social
studies. In the schools of modern Greece (at least until recently) the rule
was that the pupil had to study two hours of ancient Greek every day. But
while means are certainly relative, I hold that ends are universal and in-
dependent of times and races. Mr. Taylor refers to the ideologies of
Germany and Japan. Does he mean that Nazism was right from the
standpoint of Germany, that every country is right in relation to its par-
ticular circumstances? Cannot a country be or do wrong? Was our war
merely a dog-fight? Is there no common truth as to values-not even the
moral truth that we should tolerate each other's differences, live and let
live?
Mr. Taylor would settle problems solely by considering the immediate
pertinent data of experience. While I would agree that no general system
iof ideas has any authority without the contribution of experience, I would
deny that experience by itself is adequate as a guide without a general
frame of reference. For instance, we have the particular problem now of
settling our racial problems-the feeling against the Negro, anti-Semitism,
prejudice against immigrants, and so forth. I do not minimize our mis-
takes and our failures. But who can deny that our gradual solution of
these vexing matters is vastly different from the way in which the Nazis
proposed to deal with similar problems? That difference surely arises from
the fact that we face the task of accomodating a diversity of racial groups
in terms of the democratic philosophy, and the Germans in terms of the
Nazi philosophy. I cite Kant's dictum that, while thought by itself is
empty, experience by itself is blind; and I cite the dictum without
Kant's
subjectivistic connotations.
I wish to make it clear that I am not objecting to contextualism
tout
court. Beliefs are indeed colored by sentiments, and affected by economic
and physical situations. But the relevance works both ways. Beliefs are
just as much determining causes of social institutions as they are effects
of them. And I will go further and assert that, in certain respects,
beliefs
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transcend particular situations. Mysticism is to be found both in the West
and in the East; rationalism and empiricism, both in ancient and in modern
times. Mr. Dewey makes far too much of the fact that the doctrine of
'two-world-ism' first appeared in a slave-owning society like ancient Athens.
After all, the belief in supernaturalism has also prevailed in modern Europe
and in the United States, among autocracies and democracies, rain or
shine. In all these, there have been variations due to changing circum-
stances; there are also identities transcending the variations.
I would like to ask a question of Mr. Taylor in my turn. The primi-
tives have other values than ours, which (he implies) we must accept as
equally valid with our own. I now call to his attention the fact that the
primitives have other ideas of nature than our own. Does Mr. Taylor
hold that their 'science' is just as valid as ours? I take it not. Some
primitives believe that rivers, trees, and magnets have souls; but Mr.
Taylor denies this because he believes that naturalism is the true theory
In fact, we call people 'primitives' just because they reject the scientific
method. But, if so, how does Mr. Taylor justify his position of, on the
one hand, taking the values of the primitives as valid (relatively to their
circumstances) but, on the other hand, treating their astrologies, their
magic, their belief in witchcraft, etc. as plain wrong, absolutely wrong?
Or would Mr. Taylor say that while it is true for us that death comes from
natural causes, it is also true for others that death comes about through
the evil eye? Does mathematics change from place to place, and from
people to people? The Nazis spoke of 'Jewish science'. Now I am sure
Mr. Taylor would not speak that way, and I want to know why.
What we, in fact, do is to take our Western civilized methods of
knowledge as absolute and then, by using these as premises, to judge the
views of the primitives as superstitious. Mr. Taylor would condemn the
primitives because they do not operate according to our standards of
truth. In short,, there are according to Mr. Taylor absolute standards of
truth but not absolute standards of conduct; yet both are standards, the
first about the right way of believing, the second about the right way of
doing. I venture to suggest that Mr. Taylor's half-absolutism, half-
relativism is a theory which does not make sense. Also, I do not see
how Mr. Taylor can accept the universality of scientific truth and still
be consistent with himself.
X'I. Mr. Taylor questions our account of human nature and blames
us for ignoring the recent advances in psychology. Let us see. Tradi-
tional views have identified man with the rational and conscious part of
the mind, while modern psychology has called our attention to its non-
rational aspects, such as the instincts and the passions. Perhaps the
greatest contribution of the psychoanalytical movement is its discovery
of the unconscious. Outside the circle of professional psychologists there
have been also writers like Pareto who have made an impact on -our thinking
about human nature. Pareto, as we know, has stressed the tremendous
role of the sentiments. It has been shown pretty conclusively that the
non-rational elements are so powerful as to influence not only our be-
havior, but reason itself-reason which had been supposed to stand aloof,
in immaterial detachment from all bodily feelings. Freud's theory of
belief as a rationalization amounts to saying that reason is the hired lawyer
of the emotions, finding crooked arguments for what we believe by in-
stinct. As a matter of fact, Hume had, long before Freud, spoken of
reason as the slave of the passions. While I believe that both Hume and
Freud are certainly wrong in denying any independence to reason, I agree
that unless we look out, reason will be influenced by desire. Our edu-
cational precept, 'avoid wishful thinking', testifies both to the strength
of wish and to the power of reason to rise above wish.
Perhaps the ancients were not so ignorant of these views as we are in-
clined to think. For instance, Plato maintained that, besides reason, man
has a spirited part (Pareto's sentiments) and an appetitive part (Freud's
desires and instincts). In a remarkable passage in the Republic, he says
that all of us "even those who are the most respectable," contain within
us criminal, lawless appetites which wake up in our sleep; Plato even
refers to the incestuous desires which come out in our dreams. He further
describes the criminal type as the man who lives in the day the kind of
life we all live in our dreams. Nevertheless, it is' true that Plato, while
fully aware of the existence of the unconscious, tends to look down upon
it as a 'lower' and perhaps evil part of man; whereas it would seem that it
functions as a creative element in human nature. Puritanism and Victo-
rianism preached the suppression of appetite, or at least the ignoring of it.
In Nazi Germany, we see the evil of romanticism, that is to say the un-
checked fostering of passion without any guide from reason. It is possible
that the two phenomena are not unconnected.
Now, in the Report, we made a considerable effort to do justice to these
facts. We wrote: "Intelligence, even when taken in its widest sense, does
not exhaust the total potentialities of human nature. Man is not a con-
templative being alone." We referred to animal spirits, to sentiments,
and to the passions, and we condemned Plato for speaking condescendingly
of the non-rational factors. When Mr. Taylor writes that "the passions
... are aspects of human wants which give us the creative energies,"
he is almost paraphrasing our statement to the effect that "passions are a
source of strength."
But perhaps Mr. Taylor's point is that we should not even have drawn a
distinction between reason and the passions; he writes that curiosity is a
REPLY 279
passion too. Quite true, the desire for knowledge is a passion, sometimes
as strong and as frenzied as the so-called desires of the flesh. But sup-
posing your boy is consumed by the curiosity of studying baseball averages
and studying them all the time to the point of ignoring even what is going
on around him in the family scene, does not a problem of control arise?
And if Mr. Taylor does not like the word control, why not speak of di-
rection and reflection? I do not see how we can get away from the conflict
between reflection and impulse-a conflict which is possibly unending.
I am taking my stand now on our immediate experience of the moral
struggle. In this conflict, it is not always the case that reflection is right
and instinct wrong; the unconscious is a source of insight. My phrase
about reason subjugating the passions, which Mr. Taylor rightly criticizes,
was certainly too narrow, too one-sided to do justice to this fact. Prof.
Sheffer has admirably summed up the truth of this matter in his succinct
expression that first comes the vision and then the revision.
In this connection Mr. Taylor asks why the Report has made no place
for the creative arts in the college curriculum. (We do provide for them in
the schools.) The Report advocates creative work in the arts only as an
informal extracurricular activity on the part of the college student. But,
given that we recognize the imagination as a phase of reason, why stop short
of admitting the creative arts into full citizenship in' the college community?
It is no answer to Mr. Taylor to say that, in fact, the creative arts do not
thrive in the atmosphere of the college; that for instance, you don't produce
a writer by the methods of formal instruction. The real question is why
the college should have been so organized and so conceived as to be
unsuitable for the fostering of the arts. A college develops primarily the
faculties of analysis, of criticism and of judgment; it tends to ignore the
faculty of the imagination. Yet not even science or mathematics could
advance without drawing upon the imagination. In college courses we
analyze the works of the imagination, as, for instance, in the study of
literature and of painting; but surely this is no substitute for a direct cul-
tivation of the artistic impetus.
I think the answer to Mr. Taylor's question depends on practical rather
than on theoretical considerations. I am not sure that you can make good
artists at the same time that you are training them for a general education.
The arts require a single-mindedness of devotion and an intensity of con-
centration which, if granted, would not leave enough time and energy for
the other more general studies. Still, to send the arts-student to the arts-
school is not a satisfactory solution either, unless we see to it that the
arts-school makes a proper provision for general studies in its curriculum.
Then, again, it is hardly feasible to mix the training of the critical and the
creative powers together in one program of education; and I say this while
recognizing the fact that the two powers are interdependent. As I will
try to show below, although the values of the good life form one complex
fabric, still for purposes of knowledge and of action, we are compelled to
separate, to distinguish and to abstract. But I am open-minded on this
matter aind I am happy that colleges like Sarah Lawrence, Bennington,
and others are experimenting with programs which incorporate the creative
arts into general education.
There are certain more general issues which lie back of Mr. Taylor's
specific query. Following I. A. Richards, I will contrast prediction with
prophecy, and add poetry to this pair. Prediction stands for the mode-of
scientific knowledge and, more generally, for the analytical and technical
approach in learning. By prophecy I mean, not the literal, but the tra-
ditional, even Biblical, connotation of the term; that is, the vision of moral
values which lies at the heart of religion. This is a fresh and firm insight
into ideals which is not divorced from facts, however. The moral con-
viction contains the force to shape the facts into the pattern of the ideal,
and thus to make the prophecy come true. While the prophetic vision
of value has a reference to fact, conversely scientific prediction of fact
has a reference to value; prediction-has a purpose, whether purely cognitive
or practical as well. Nevertheless, in science, the purpose is received un-
critically and traditionally; it does not emerge from an unclouded per-
ception. Lastly, by poetry I mean something which bears both upon
fact and value, fusing the two into one concrete sensuous insight. Poetry
always constructs idols for the gods; it exhibits perfection in an image; it
is the original and vital sin of the fall of the spirit into the flesh.
Th'e analytical temper which we so sedulously cultivate in our colleges
is apt to prove hostile to the faculty of what I have called prophecy. The
over-critical attitude often leads to a weakening of one's belief in ideals.
The clever student may turn cynic and denounce all ideals as an outcome
of sentimentality. Here one extreme is apt to generate its opposite ex-
treme; and the cynic may give way to the fanatic. The extremes of cyni-
cism on the one hand and of sentimentalism or fanaticism on the other are
probably found more frequently in the colleges than in any other sphere.
This is one of the hazards of our educational process-that prediction and
prophecy may each destroy the other. How to develop students who are
shrewd, who can make a cool and realistic appraisal both of means and
ends and who, at the same time preserve their faith in ideals, recognizing
that ends are matters of rational discussion and are, in a sense, facts (no
less than material things are facts) and not mere projections of sentiment
-this is one of the hardest tasks of the teacher. Education is the un-
folding of the whole man. The critical, analytical faculties-whether
construed in Aristotle's or in Dewey's fashion-are only a part of man.
REPLY 281
The imagination and the awareness of ideals are no less parts of the mind,
and their development is an essential aim of education. But while the end
is clear, the ways and means of implementation are not clear.
I mean nothing recondite by the poetic imagination. Take the shell,
familiar to all, which develops in the form of a spiral. This is a particular
object forming a concrete whole with a particular pattern generating its
own beauty. To the scientist, the pattern is an illustration of abstract
laws and a composite resultant of various mechanical causes. Yet the
individual pattern with its individual beauty are natural facts. While the
scientist analyzes a whole into a plurality of interacting parts, to the
visual poet the whole, in its very wholeness, is a ruling cause throughout
nature and throughout art. The poet's mind is synoptic and works through
metaphor and analogy. He finds design in the spiral nebulae no less
than in shells, in the tornado, in cones, in trees and in their leaf arrange-
ments, in the horns of quadrupeds, in the design of a spider's web, in the
staircases of old palaces and in the Ionian volute.2
Whereas the scientific and the critical faculties flourish in the conscious
,foreground of the self, the prophetic and poetical powers spring from the
unconscious regions of the mind. As popular repute has it, the poet is
inspired by the Muse and the prophet is a man possessed. The temper of
our age is dominantly scientific, in the field of social behavior no less than
in thought. Thus we believe in having consciously planned systems and
institutions in politics and in the social order. John Dewey is almost re-
peating the very words of Socrates when he preaches today the doctrine
that life, individual, social, and political, should be controlled by conscious
deliberation. While all this is right, it is likely to' lead to the undervaluing
of the more spontaneous and unconscious springs of prophecy and of the
imagination. Doubtless, to stress the unconscious powers in a one-sided
fashion would be extremely dangerous. Plato was right in his fear, even
his terror of poetry. While he himself wrote poetry (in prose), he de-
nounced th~e poets; for the unconscious is a violent, dark horse, which
unless firmly controlled by its rider runs away in frenzy, and destroys both
the rider and itself.
Science is concerned with closed systems, and thinks in terms of abrupt,
limited concepts. In the imagination, on the other hand, nature is dis-
closed as a unity in complexity, and as pervaded with order. The analyt-
ical insights of science need to be supplemented and revised by the syn-
optic viewpoint of the imagination. The philosopher should go down
into the cave of technical analysis and should also go out upon the hill of
2
The above reference to spirals in nature and in art is almost a verbatim quotation
from "Art, Nature, Education" by Gretchen Warren.
the synoptic vision. What I have in mind is not far different from Spi-
noza's scientia intuitive. According to Spinoza, intellectual intuition is
direct and concrete without being confused, vague, or ecstatic; it is the
apprehension of substance through the diversity of its modes. I have been
leading up to the point that the dominant aim of instruction in the arts
should be (a) the understanding of nature and (b) the education of the
passions, with self-expression only as a happy by-product. Also I hope
that the scientific and the poetical explorations of nature should be so
related as to supplement one another. It may be noted that Greek science
included the'categories of the imagination; for instance, Plato regarded
proportion and harmony as categories of explanation for natural phenom-
ena.
Yet the analytical standpoint of science has its validity; and here there is
a vital divergence between Mr. Taylor and myself. As I have already
suggested, Mr. Taylor's metaphysics is one of process and organism. To
quote: we are presented with "the intermingling of infinite elements in
infinite ways in a multi-causal universe." Since every event is contextual,
neither human nature nor nature at large can be validly broken up into
disparate elements. Since things interpenetrate, any classification based
on distinctions is false. While I feel sympathetic with this approach, I
would add that to distinguish is one thing, to separate is another. Thought
may validly distinguish what is inseparable in fact. Unless the mind can
abstract, no exact statement is possible, not even the exact statement that
truth is contextual. Natural science operates on the premise that closed
systems exist, that we can safely ignore the general context in studying
a particular area before us, that we can split the atom of a concrete event
so as to' study its properties in isolation from one another. Man is a single
fact; yet the study of man can be and is carried on in terms of several
distinct sciences. There is man as a physical and moving body (me-
chanics); man as a living body (biology); man as a mind (psychology);
man as a member of a community (sociology); man as an immortal soul
.(theology). Mr. Taylor will recall that, in addition to process and events,
Mr. Whitehead posits the realm of eternal objects. Because eternal
objects are distinct, exact thought is possible; being' eternal objects, they
do not run away while we are talking about them.
VII. Mr. Taylor dislikes my phrase that one of the aims of education is
to "break the stranglehold of the present." At the same time, I have
written that the present is our only fact, but that we need the perspective
of the past for the understanding of the present. A good many years ago,
Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard, Law School was teaching a course in
social philosophy in a trade-union college in Boston. I hope he will not
object if I tell this story about his experiences there. One day, some of
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his students asked him the following question: "Why do you, Mr. Pound,
present to us the doctrines of the past? Why not discuss the present
scene?" Mr. Pound's answer was something like this: "Should I discuss
with you the issues of the present, your emotions would be aroused because
you are personally involved in these issues and you would not be able to
discuss them in an objective way. I prefer to take you to Plato and read
the Republic with you. There the same problems are raised-socialism,
democracy, and the like-but because you are viewing them at a distance,
you are able to discuss them more dispassionately." Mr. Taylor, however,
makes the point that just as the present is difficult to apprehend because of
its very nearness, so is the past hard to grasp because of its very distance.
It is practically impossible to study the past in its setting and character,
and without viewing it in terms of present prejudices and institutions. The
moral of his remark, so far as I am concerned, is that education should
explore past and present in a rhythmic alternation.
VIII. Mr. Taylor criticizes the statement that there should be com-
pulsory exposure of the student to the basic disciplines of the humanities,
social studies, and natural sciences. There are several points to be made in
answer. The Harvard Report advises that only six courses (out of the
sixteen) should be compulsory. So far as Harvard is concerned, the pro-
posal involves the addition of just one to the number of courses already
required. Secondly, it is not exact to speak of these as compulsory courses.
What is proposed is six courses in certain required areas, and there is a
considerable variety of courses within each area, among which the student
may choose. Thirdly, if Mr. Taylor still objects to any compulsory ex-
posure of the student, I would like to point out that a student cannot be
expected to make wise choices as to his field unless he knows what he is
choosing from. Let the philosophers consult their wives as to how shopping
should be done. The husband will go out and buy the first thing he sees in
the store. (That seems to be Mr. Taylor's advice about choosing fields.)
But his wife will visit several stores in order to compare values. It is
notorious that merchants prefer to sell to men because women are shrewder;
by 'exposing' themselves to a diversity of goods, they are better equipped
to make the right purchases. Students are like husbands; since they hate
to wander around the relevant stores, a measure of compulsion must be
used.
IX. Mr. Taylor criticizes our procedure of reaching conclusions by first
going over existing viewpoints. Rather than do that, he says, each
philosopher should start with his problems, his experience, and his world
and so construct his own philosophy de novo. Descartes asserted that the
universe is created anew at every moment by God; and Mr. Taylor proposes
a perpetual creationism in the univese of ideas. If a student wants to
become a painter, I suppose the first commandment is: "Thou shalt stay
away from the Metropolitan Museum and from the Louvre; thou shalt
not contemplate the works of the masters." In this country the concept
of the self-made man has become a cult; and it is true that in the area of
belief, no one can make our choices for us. Especially in moments of
crisis we are Leibnizian monads without windows, without even doors.
Man is solitary by nature, without our having to take special steps to make
him so. President Conant of Harvard, in an article published in the At-
lantic Monthly several months ago, proposed that all trust funds be abol-
ished and that taxes on inheritance be greatly increased, so that each in-
dividual should start his life from scratch. Whatever the merits of the
proposal in the field of social economy, I cannot think that it is a sound
view in the field of human thought. It is highly uneconomical to destroy
the intellectual capital garnered in the past. Keep the inherited intel-
lectual capital, but do not content yourself with clipping coupons; use the
capital for starting new enterprises.
X. In accordance with his metaphysics of the final reality of the concrete
particular, Mr. Taylor asserts that each different student should be the
object of a different program; he rejects curricula and programs which are
devised in relative abstraction from the individual student. This is nom-
inalism in education; it is the denial of general rules, a point of view which
seems to me inadequate both in metaphysics and in education. But my
criticism of Mr. Taylor's formula to abolish all formulae will be from
another angle. Roughly speaking, the human individual at successive
stages belongs to three societies: the family, the school, and the com-
munity. (I am using school to include college.) To suggest that member-
ship in the one supersedes membership in the other is to simplify matters
unduly. Mr. Dewey has rightly said that learning does not end with
formal schooling; and of course, it begins with the family. The child,
the youth, and the mature person are not mutually exclusive phases in the
life of man. The child survives in the grown-up, representing as he does
the sense of wonder, the spontaneous joy of living, and the creative im-
pulse itself.
Nevertheless, properly qualified, the distinction of the three phases
is valid. In the family the child is considered, not on his absolute merits,
but with a special and a favorable bias. the mother loves the sickly child
no less than the healthy one, and the stupid no less than the bright tone.
The family constitutes that nest of personal intimacy and immediate
affection so necessary to shelter the child from the cold winds blowing
from the outside. The protection which the family affords is fully as much
moral as it is physical. The child has little or no judgment about values;
thrust early into the world, and not able to discriminate between good and
REPLY 285
evil, he would absorb both equally. The family establishes a period of
seclusion from the world during which standards of judgment are developed
in the mind of the child, so that when he goes out, he is intelligent enough
to recognize evil and strong enough to avoid it.
Within the family we are dependent beings, but once in the world, each
person is on his own. He starts off as scarcely more than a number, and it
is entirely up to him, to his efforts and his merits, whether or not he is
specially noticed. The unsolicited readiness to pour out affection is cer-
tainly lacking. All the same, as a member of the community, the individual
is treated as an adult, able to take care of himself (and of others) in the
rough and tumble of the world. If love is lacking, there is rough justice
at least. Once more I admit that my portraits of the two societies are
unduly sketchy. After all, in the family the child has to stand up against
his brothers and sisters; and in the older days, when families were larger,
there would be a great deal of competition for him. No judgment of the
world can be harsher than what we have to take in the bosom of the family.
There, the child does not choose his companions; they are thrust upon him
by nature. Hence the friction and the necessary effort to make adjust-
ments are much greater there than in friendship, where the companions
are chosen and may be dropped. Nor, of course, is the world always as
harsh as I have described it. The community does care for its members,
and socialism may be regarded as the attempt to convert the community
into a family. Then again, the youngster enters the larger world backed
by his family and his relatives, by clubs and such Eke smaller groups.
But to grant all this is not to deny that the difference between the two
societies is important.
The school is a way-station from the family to the larger world; and be-
cause it is an intermediary stage, the school has features of both societies.
We speak of the homesickness which a child is apt to feel when he first
leaves home for school or college. Homesickness is not just a longing for
certain people or for a place; it is rather the psychological state of missing
that care and that absolute valuation of ourselves which we get in the
family. To that extent the school is an impersonal society. Yet it also
has obvious characteristics of the family, Life in the college has something
of the irresponsibility of life in the famly; and it is the magic of that irre-
sponsibility which alumni try to recover in their reunions. Once upon
a time, a man fell off the Eiffel tower and on the way down, he was over-
heard to mutter, "A wonderful sensation if only it would last." Alas,
schooling cannot last forever-formal schooling, that is. Inevitably, the
youngster will bump up against the hard earth, although luckily without
the fatal consequences implied in our story.
The tutorial system at Harvard is based on the recognition of the fact
that the college should not be a wholly impersonal society. The tutorial
system has been defined as personal teaching; yet it is more (or less) than
that. I have been puzzled by the fact that, at Harvard College, students
have valued the tutorial relation even when they cut their appointments,
failed to study for their assignments, and generally neglected the instruc-
tional opportunities of the tutorial system. The answer, I am convinced,
lies in this: The student essentially feels that, in the person of his tutor,
he has a friend at court, somebody who knows him and knows him by his
first name, one to whom he might conceivably go with his troubles, though
actually he may never do so; at the least, he thinks of the tutor as one who
knows him well enough to recommend him later on to professional schools
or to business-men for a position after college. In some sense, the tutor
fills the role of the parent in the mind of the student.
Clearly, the extent to which the teacher should allow himself to be drawn
into this role is limited, although it is not easy to decide where to draw the
line. The teacher is not a father-confessor; his office is not a nursery; his
conference with thee student is not a psychological stance. Neither priest,
nor parent, nor psychologist, the teacher has his own unique, although
restricted function, which is this: by using the special leverage of the
mind, to pry open the Pandora's box of total human potentiality, and to
direct the energies thus released to right ends.
This has been a rather long introduction to my argument with Mr.
Taylor. My point is that Mr. Taylor's scheme has the fault of perpet-
uating the family il the school, whereas the school should be a means of
emancipating the youngster from the family and of equipping him to be-
come a full-fledged individual. If courses and programs are devised wholly
around the interests and needs of the particular student, then the student
might get the idea that he is the, center around which the universe re-
volves. To become an adult is no less than to take the Copernican step,
to realize that one is at the periphery and not at the center. Incidentally,
a point remains to be made about educational techniques.
In addition
to tutorial, to individual teaching and discussion, there is the much crit-
icized lecture system. I do not wish to deny its faults, not the least of
which is its possibly injurious effect on the lecturer himself. Speaking on a
platform, and looking down on the students, the teacher may get the idea
that he is the voice of truth. It is good for him to sit on a level with the
student and talk with him as with an equal, in the give-and-take of
informal
argument. Yet the lecture system has this merit, that it confronts the
student with the impersonality, the austerity, even the majesty of knowl-
edge. The student is led to realize that the truth is something which he
does not create but must accept, and so learns to overcome his petty
pride. To conclude-neither the student nor the school is a destination
REPLY 287
or a center, but both look beyond themselves, on the one hand to the realm
of objective truth, and on the other to the world of living human beings.
C
Starting with a modest disclaimer of philosophical competence, Mr.
Puffer proceeds to make temperate proposals conceived in a truly philo-
sophical spirit. Inasmuch as he stresses the role of the teacher, I will discuss
the relation of the teacher to his subject-matter. I do not believe that the
good teacher develops wholly in isolation from particular subject-matter
(as Mr. Puffer seems to think); to some extent,.the subject-matter makes
the teacher. This is perhaps more evident in the schools, where the teacher
has less choice of his subject, than in the colleges; and where a potentially
good teacher may fail to unfold because of the frustrating effect of alien
subject-matter. The influence of the latter on teaching is more subtle but
no less real in the colleges. I will speak of Harvard because that is a
college I know something about, admitting at the same time that Harvard
is not quite typical, because of its character as a university-college.
I think it will be admitted that the pattern of the good teacher has
changed considerably since the days of President Eliot. I am only noting
the fact and not passing any judgment about it. While the origins of this
change are complex, surely a very important cause is the transformation
of learning. As knowledge came to be increasingly specialized, the teacher
has become narrower. I recall a scientist saying regretfully, "we are too
busy to get educated." Given the strenuous demands of the specialized
subject-matter, I don't see how the teachers can be blamed. This is true
not only in the natural sciences but in other fields, even in the humanities.
In so far as literature has turned into philology, the character of teaching
has correspondingly altered. The change in the character of learning in
the field of history leaps to the eye. Going or gone is the Macaulay type
of narrative and dramatic history; we have now arrived at the stage where
historical writing is meticulously factual and exact.
Thus, the broader and generally cultivated type of teacher of the older
school is being replaced by the narrower, yet possibly livelier type of today.
In the earlier generations, the college teacher was selected partly with
reference to his qualifications as a man. I do not here have in mind the
strictly social qualifications of the "gentleman" (although these must have
been sometimes considered too). I mean that the teacher was expected
to be a full-blooded man, with a dominating personal distinction-for
instance, a man like William James or Bliss Perry. (Again, I am speaking
only of Harvard teachers.) Doubtless there were abuses in those days, and
I do not propose to paint the past in a rosy, possibly meretricious glow.
Many of the then courses were "snaps"; and often the lectures most
popular with the students consisted of uncoordinated, though perhaps
pungent, comments about everything under the sun. The lecture became
an occasion in which the professor gave vent to his prejudices, sometimes
in a witty and interesting fashion. Wise-cracks were offered as substitutes
for wisdom. Nevertheless the trend to wisdom, to breadth and to depth,
was there. I don't think we wish to abandon specialization; we could not
even if we would. For that is how knowledge advances; that is how pro-
fessional competence is obtained; that is how a student will earn his living.
The ideal-so hard to attain-is to combine specialization with philo-
sophical understanding and imagination.
The Harvard Committee took the stand that the teachers of -the general
courses should not constitute a separate faculty, but should come from-or
at any rate be attached to-the special departments. To separate the
general teachers from the specialists would have meant giving up the hope
and perhaps the chance that the departmental specialists could be brought
around. Such a plan would have been injurious not only to the depart-
mental but to the general courses as well, by making the teachers.of the
latter into pariahs in the college community, who would be deprived of
the respect of their specialized colleagues. In short, such a pattern would
have involved introducing something like the prevailing cleavage of dentists
and doctors which the medical profession is now striving to remove. By
virtue of the presently accepted procedure, it is hoped that there will be
cross-fertilization between general and special subjects; for, the ever-present
danger of the conception of general education is that specialized teaching
will become even more specialized than it has been heretofore.
Mr. Puffer voices the fear that teaching in the interdepartmental areas
will not be of the best. The most fertile minds are those which are ad-
vancing the frontiers of knowledge, and such advancement takes place only
in the special fields. Yet there are specialists and specialists; there are
those, for instance, whose contribution consists in only burrowing deeper in a
hole dug by their predecessors. However necessary such work may be, I
don't think that those who conduct it will be sorely missed in undergraduate
teaching. And who can tell but that there will be frontiers to explore and
conquer in the areas of interconnectedness? It is true, surely, that some
of the best fruits of knowledge have been gathered when research has leaped
over the barriers of the exacting sciences.
Mr. Puffer writes judiciously of the ways in which the teaching of eco-
nomics can be humanized. In middle-group and even elementary college
teaching, economics has sometimes been presented as a set of abstractions,
when in fact, economics is the study of people, of their needs and of their
institutions. Of course, mathematical and other exact economics is part
of the science; but is only a part. The change in terminology is instructive;
REPLY 289
economics used to be called political economy; and the change from the
latter to the former phrase reveals a change in our mode of approach. At
least in school and college teaching (as distinguished from graduate in-
struction) political economy is the sounder conception, bringing out as it
does the fact that economics is a study of the polis, that is, of the
community. Even the other word "economics" is suggestive if taken
literally to mean the study of the needs of the "household," except that
we must conceive economics as embracing social rather than domestic
needs.
Nor should natural science be opposed to the humanities; it can provide
suitable material for a general course. Here I must temporarily return to
Mr. Hook's discussion of the Harvard Report. In the latter, we identify
science with the trend of specialism; yet we also propose science as one of
the general courses. Mr. Hook pounces upon this as a contradiction.
Nevertheless, we had also said that science partakes of some of the features
of relational or philosophical thinking; there is, for instance, the methodol-
ogy of science. A general course on science could at least analyze the
general theory of specialism in knowledge.
Every physics teacher knows how hard it is to make the work of per-
forming experiments in the laboratory significant to the student, who is apt
to feel that he is made to go through the motions of discovering something
when the answer is already there. The solution of the trouble does not lie
in abolishing experiments necessarily. The student should be helped to
realize what the problems were which had faced the scientists at the time
when the experiments were first made. Mr. Whitehead has said that most
of the time the teacher is answering questions which the student has never
asked. In the physical sciences it is important to give significance to the
answers by going back to the history of the subject and showing how the
questions arose. Furthermore, those questions arose in particular
social
settings; there were economic and social situations which demanded at-
tention. Scientific thought does not emerge in a human vacuum; it is inter-
related with the social context. (For example, the student might be ap-
propriately directed to a reading of some of Prof. Bernal's works.) I
have already said that there are philosophical implications in science which
need to be made explicit. Science is philosophical in the further sense that
it is not as exact as it appears to be. By studying the history of medicine,
the medical student can learn how not to be dominated by fads parading
as certainties. Even when they are not fads, the history of science shows
how scientific theories represent "opinion" (in Plato's sense), in that they
stand in need of constant revision.
Along with the influence of the social climate upon the growth of science,
there is the reverse influence. Science is remaking society and the world.
What are the values of this causal action, what are its limits, how, if at all,
this influence should be guided and controlled-these are significant topics
of discussion for a general course in the sciences. In sum, the interrelations
of science with science, and of science in general with society, the philosoph-
ical premises of science and its methodology, the history of science, and
most certainly also significant doses of just science-these are some of the
topics to be taken up in a general course in science. Incidentally, it is to
be hoped that the genre of the great teacher and popularizer of science. as
exemplified in the T. Huxleys and Tyndalls of the older generation, will
be revived.
I am impressed with the parallel which Mr. Puffer draws between the
current proposals in the educational field and the change which we see
taking place around us in the economic and political fields. He compares
the proposed transition from the system of free electives to that of com-
pulsory exposure to general courses, to the transition from the system of
free enterprise to socialism, or even to the New Deal. His exposition of the
difficulties and troubles of the latter is forceful enough to make one wonder
whether we are not abandoning important values in moving toward a
greater control and direction of the student's program. But there are
other analogies equally instructive; there is the organization of the United
Nations which, at least in the long run, will entail limitations upon national
sovereignty. In education no less than in our national life, the problem
is how to avoid the twin evils of anarchy and despotism. It is well enough
to say that the student should be trusted completely to choose his courses.
But in saying that, are we not expecting from the student, before he has
had his education, a degree of judgment and wisdom which comes to him
only after he has had his education? Yet I would agree with Mr. Puffer
that the ultimate, although still very remote, goal is that the general
courses should be so good, so well devised that, like the Aristotelian God,
they will function as unmoved movers, eliciting the free response of the
student to choose them.
D
I regret very much that I have been unable to discuss Mr. Kallen's
contribution. But his paper came to my hands much too late and after
I had completed my reply. On many essential points, I agree with him;
where I disagree, it is chiefly in so far as he advocates the pragmatic-
naturalistic position which I have already discussed.
I must apologize to educators for having loaded this essay with philo-
sophical, technical verbiage. And I hope my colleagues will forgive me if
I have not taken up (not even attempted to take up) all their questions.
REPLY 291
My space is limited, and I had to select those questions which seemed to
me most pertinent. I am sure they will join me in extending hearty con-
gragulations to the Editor of this Journal for initiating this educational
symposium. It was time that philosophers not only wrote books about
education, but also contributed articles on the subject to the professional
philosophical journals. Books are well enough, but articles stir the breezes
of controversy and stimulate discussion. It is essential that philosophy
should make its contribution to educational thought and practice and
especially to the training of teachers in teachers' schools. And conversely
education has an important contribution to make to philosophy. Mr.
Dewey has finely said that education provides a vehicle by which philos-
ophy is transmitted to daily living; the teacher is the most important link
joining the philosopher with the layman. The Report has good things
to say about the teachers' colleges, stressing the fact that these latter, al-
most unassisted by the colleges, enabled our country to make the necessary
transition from the older type of education devised for the privileged group,
to that intended for all the citizens. Nevertheless, a query remains. It
is our country's misfortune that teachers' colleges are separated from the
faculties of arts and sciences in many of the typical colleges and universities.
Due to various causes, educational thought now tends to grow in isolation
from the general area of learning. This is vicious abstractionism. Al-
though I should not trespass where angels fear to tread, I venture to ex-
press a doubt whether there is educational subject-matter which is distinct
from general learning. I am not now questioning the proposition that
there is a science of education which must be mastered. I am questioning
whether that science can be abstracted as a separate study. In short,
whereas natural science deals with abstracted areas, the subject-matter of
education merges into general learning. Educational thought is in the
relational mode and should be so studied.
The Harvard Report has envisaged the present problem in educational
practice as one primarily of overcoming the limitations of specialism in
knowledge and of sheer diversity in democracy. Doubtless there are other
problems too, more or less equally demanding solution. Today when we
are coming out of a critical war, it is perhaps hard to heed the call of our
educational need. We see before us the dangers of an international anarchy
which we must avoid at all costs; we are equally concerned with the do-
mestic problems of economic reconversion. These are the larger and the
louder calls, tending to drown the gentler sound of our educational re-
quirements. Panic-stricken, especially by
the
implications of the atomic
bomb, some of us may be inclined to say: what is the good of undertaking
any reforms at all when the world is in imminent
danger
of destruction?
Yet in so far as we live now, we must accept the premises and demands
of living; we must advance the tasks of reconstruction on both the mac-
roscopic and the microscopic levels. We shall proceed to subjugate the
jungle of international and economic problems; we shall also "cultivate
the garden" of education.3
RAPHAEL DEMOS.
Rejoinders by Professor Hook and President Taylor will be published in the
March issue of this journal.

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